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A Labor of Love

In a few weeks we are going back to the desert with 50 extraordinary entrepreneurial women who decided that it is time for them to grow their business and themselves. Just like every retreat, we have calls with many potential participants to answer their questions and check if this is the right time for them.

My favorite part about these conversations is when someone shares the challenge of investing this money in herself. I always respond to this with an offer regarding a payment plan. Money shouldn't be an issue if Double You is really what she needs now. In cases where women have real financial cash flow challenges, we agree to take upon ourselves a ridiculous amount of payments (try us). I believe in this way because if a few hundred shekels a month are not worth her investment in her business, maybe it's really not the right time for her.

Dealing with money has so many implications on our lives and leads to many questions of value and worth. We too were facing similar questions in our most recent retreat in Costa Rica, when trying to find a suitable business model.

We always seem to preach in our retreat about monetizing, the importance of not being afraid of money, believing you are worthy of money, being responsible and finding the right business model. And yet, a few weeks before our last retreat, it looked as though we were going to lose a few thousand dollars. It was the first retreat we did with no sponsors, and we were blind to some of the financial risks it would involve.

In the end, by minimizing costs and having more women sign up, we were able to break even - however, this still left a feeling of frustration and failure. How could we not make any money or possibly lose money from something so valuable? All of the participants of our last retreat defined it as a life changing experience. Shouldn’t life changing experiences be financially sustainable?

To give you a bit of background - Double You started with financial support from organizations that saw the importance and the value of creating a community of entrepreneurial women. The biggest support was from the amazing Schusterman Foundation (ROI Network Incubator), which allowed us at first to subsidize the retreat for participants for only $200, and cover the rest.

Schusterman, being a responsible funder, said from the beginning that they would invest in us so that we can eventually become sustainable. So in the following year, we charged the real price from participants and invested the remaining funds from Schusterman’s support back into our community which we manage all year long. In our last retreat, we began the real journey of finding THE business model that would make Double You a sustainable endeavor. After researching, asking, consulting and tapping into our intuition and inner wisdom, our model was born.

We felt the responsibility to share it with you transparently - because once you get how it works, youcan understand that our price is more similar to a crowdfunding process where we collect resources from all participants (money) and organizers (time) to ensure that the Double You retreat will empower all of its participants - plus, offer that life changing experience.

We charge each participant between $720 (early birds) and $900 (late birds). It ranges according to room and registration time. The cost of each participant is $550. Theestimated profit for the upcoming retreat will be $6,300. This money is divided among five women that work 3 months to make this retreat happen (doing marketing, organizing, design, content development, interviews etc.). Dividing the profit leaves each with an average "salary" of $1,300 each.

$1,300 for hundreds of hours of investment. We obviously don't make a living out of it. Why are we doing this?

During the birth of our business model, we had realized that Double You is an investment we all make in ourselves and in the world. It is a labor of love.

To make this vision come to life, it requires our investment - the entire Double You Team.

When former participants volunteer in organizing, refer their friends to participate, create collaborations to bring Double You to other parts of the world - they are following the same movement; spreading and expanding this labor of love.

The return on investment that participants see includes feeling more empowered to approach their work after the retreat, attaining new skills, receiving clarity, holding up to their commitments and so much more. We chose a price our target audience could afford and we know the retreat provides a higher value.

Just listen to Tal Shavit in the video linked above.

We know the more we grow financially, the more value we can provide to women worldwide. We are still working towards creating a sustainable way to make Double You more profitable for all of us women involved.

If you are ready to join this investment with us, and take the time to invest in yourself, apply now to Double You. Our upcoming retreat will take place September 22-24 in the Israeli desert.